


Dark! Steve Rogers

by AnneAce



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America: The First Avenger - Fandom, Captain America: The Winter Solider, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bone Breaking, Dark!Steve Rogers - Freeform, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, People have complex feelings, Sorry Not Sorry, Steve is not necessarily a good person, Steve is unnecessarily violent, Steve knew he was going to die crashing the plane, Violence, bucky is an angel, list story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26832997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneAce/pseuds/AnneAce
Summary: Everyone always talks about how good and virtuous Steve is, but honestly for a moment give me Dark! Steve Rogers.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 75





	Dark! Steve Rogers

Everyone always talks about how good and virtuous Steve is, but honestly for a moment give me Dark! Steve Rogers. 

  * Give me an angry Brooklyn kid who looks at the evil in the world and doesn’t see it as something to fix, but as the biggest target. 
  * Give me Steve getting into back-alley fights not because it’s the right thing to do, but because beating up the cripple kid will get your reputation ruined. 
  * Give me Steve who follows every rule in the public eye to make everyone look worse. To make them doubt how good of a person they can be because no one can be as good as the Rogers boy. 
  * Give me Bucky Barnes who isn’t worried about who is going to hit Steve, but is worried about whose life Steve is going to ruin.
  * Bucky who tells Steve war stories and stories about the future so Steve will know which guy to ruin. 
  * Imagine the war coming and the regret Bucky feels as he watches Steve standing on the block yelling about justice and the right thing to do, just so he can see how many chumps he can get to sell away their life to the army. 
  * Then Bucky gets drafted. Steve is a tornado of furry. No one gets to take away what is his. Death had already taken his mother, death doesn’t get to take away Bucky too. 
  * So Steve tries to join the army who rejects him. Which pisses him off. He stumbles and falls messing up all of their paperwork for the day. What else can you expect from a cripple? 

* * *

  * Give me a Steve who when Erskine asks if he wants to kill Nazis Steve answers no, but Erskine never asked what Steve did want to do. 
  * Give me Peggy Carter who gets a private letter from a mysterious Sergeant Barnes to not let her eyes off of Steve. 
  * And she follows his advice, but Steve already knows how to play this game. He knows Erskine is looking for virtue and it's easy enough to hide his will to destroy everything in his frustration of getting picked on. 
  * Give me Bucky Barnes who learned long ago how to smooth talk and manipulate information so he can get ahead of Steve’s plans. Imagine the pit in his stomach when he hears that Steve was chosen for the serum. Anyone who knows the pair would realize that it was not such a mistake that Hydra learned about the day the serum was going to be administered. Someone had to stop Steve from becoming worse than he already was. 
  * Imagine Steve with his new body lighting up with joy as he realizes what damage he can cause with it. Hurling a man out of a submarine with his bare hands is only the beginning.
  * The blood lust Steve has curling up when he gets sent to do pretty shows instead of overseas. 
  * There is always something that goes wrong during photoshoots and interviews, but the shows go off without a hitch. Steve is always making small talk and going out to dinner with donors and senators who soon find their dirty laundry aired after the roadshow is gone. 
  * In every city, the roadshow visits the hospital sees an uptick of injured patients. Broken bones and punched out jaws. 
  * The showgirls change in front of Steve and run too him when someone gets a little too handsy, but are so very careful about who they turn into him. They know that Steve likes getting into fights a little too much. 
  * They send letters to a Sergeant Barnes who asks a lot of questions and tells them to be careful. 
  * Give me Steve Rogers who rubs elbows with the generals in the audiences to convince them to send the show to Europe. To give their boys on the front lines something entertaining. 



* * *

  * Steve never planned on staying with the roadshow once he got to Europe, but he hasn’t gotten a letter from Bucky in a month and Bucky always knows who can get his letters sent out right away.
  * When Steve hears about Hydra's weapons facility he makes sure Peggy Carter sees him trying to leave. He knows she will force her help on to him. 
  * Imagine Steve Rogers not using a gun to fight, because he prefers to hear the crush of bones under his hands. 
  * Give me Steve Rogers who leaves people wishing they were dead. 
  * Give me Bucky Barnes who learns to be the best shoot with a gun, because that is mercy. 
  * Imagine the Howling Commandos when Steve saw how well they worked together, and how much destruction they caused. How much trouble they could get into. 
  * Politically but also with disobeying orders. 
  * Give me cold winter nights sitting around the campfire and Steve telling stories about all the times their Sargent got him out of trouble. 
  * Give me the Howlies realizing that Bucky is not Steve’s savior but everyone else's. 
  * In the end, it doesn’t matter. Except how it adds layers to their relationship. To know that Steve is never honest with his intentions especially when he sounds like he is. It doesn’t matter because there isn’t another soul alive who could take out a Hydra base like he can. 
  * Steve might be a cruel bastard, but he takes care of his men. Makes sure they have boots and blankets and rations even if he has to steal them from others. He doesn’t treat them like expendable pieces like the rest of the military does. 
  * And maybe the rest of the Howlies are a little like Steve too. They just can’t admit it to themselves like Steve does. 
  * Give me Steve who doesn’t hide how in love he is with Bucky. Who knows that they can’t be kicked out because they are needed so badly, but flaunting his homosexuality will always make them angry. 
  * The Howlies make movies in between missions. With every set being haunted. There is always something wrong with the script or the cameras, or the light, or someone drugged the director's coffee. Nothing deadly, but a mild hallucinogen. It’s a miracle that any of those movies finished filming. 



* * *

  * Give me the Howling commandos physically restraining Steve after Bucky falls from the train. He can’t be let near anyone for hours or he will rip them apart. 
  * Bucky is dead, and Steve is untethered. There is nothing the Howlies can do to keep Steve’s pension for causing trouble and misery at bay like Bucky could, so they point him at the fight and pray. 
  * Phillips and Peggy both tell Steve that the world still needs him. That he still has work to do. So Steve puts a plane of bombs in the ocean because the world can go to hell. The world took Bucky from him, so he’ll take away what the world needs. 
  * Imagine the legacy of Steve Rogers living as an icon of virtue and justice and the people who knew him were forced to stay silent. Even from the grave, Steve is causing trouble. 



* * *

  * Give me Steve waking up from the ice furious. Sending twenty security guards to the hospital before Fury can get him settled down enough to talk. To explain. 
  * Imagine Steve joining a gym because he can’t get into back-alley fights anymore. 
  * The havoc he wrecks on Shield. Playing games of keep-away just to make his security team panic whenever he disappears. The good old American Boy quickly becomes a familiar cloak he wears. It’s useful for spreading rumors and starting feuds. He can make news channels talk about him for days depending on what he says. Steve loves how much trouble and heart attacks he can cause now even if he does hate the future.



* * *

  * Give me Steve perking up when Tony Stark gets into his face to yell and posture, and the slow ways Steve starts to learn Tony so he can try to take him down. But Tony becomes too important in the fight for Steve to play with. So instead he focuses his attention on the shifty things Shield is doing, and breaking the bones and ripping off limbs of the aliens. 
  * Clint sees Steve during the fight rip the limbs off of one Chitauri and leave it to die on the ground screaming. He shoots an arrow into it, to put it out of its misery. 



* * *

  * Give me Natasha after the battle of New York trying to figure Steve out. Trying to sort out the truth from the lies as she slowly watches Agents of Shield who were previously competent grow insane and quit. 
  * Imagine Natasha finding a small box of hidden letters signed from Sergeant Barnes. 
  * Natasha listens a little closer when “My Dad loved him more than he could ever love me,” Tony Stark complains about Steve Rogers. 
  * Natasha and Clint are the only ones at Shield who can spar with Steve. Steve doesn’t pull his punches for anyone, but she suspects that he moves a bit slower so she can dodge when they are sparing together. 
  * Give me Steve jumping off of planes so Shield has to spend hours on lectures about mission safety. 
  * Who follows orders to the exact letter so they have to be extra careful about how they give him missions. 
  * Give me a Shield who sends Captain America to “take out” a foreign enemy only to find that enemy alive every bone broke, internal bleeding, and an eye socket caved in. Natasha knows this is not the worst he can do. Shield is quick to realize their mistake when Steve points out that you don’t have to kill someone to make sure they are unable to do harm. 



* * *

  * Sam is out jogging one morning when some happy asshole decides to lap him. He can tell Steve is lying when he says he doesn’t know what makes him happy. He’s pretty sure he’s happy he doesn’t know the truth. 
  * Give me Steve Rogers who decides to destroy all of Shield not because it’s a part of Hydra but because that will cause the most chaos, fear, and panic. 
  * At the end of it all, Steve doesn’t go looking for Bucky. Instead, he destroys the rest of Hydra. If it wasn’t a bunch of Nazi’s they were killing Sam might object to the way Steve kills them, crushing in heads, collapsing rib cages, blowing up buildings. But he’s read the Winter Soldier files and every time he remembers that he doesn’t care so much anymore. 
  * Sam for a long time wonders why Steve isn’t in a half craze to find Bucky. 
  * That is until one day he steps outside while Steve is interrogating a poor man and a bullet ends up through the Hydra Agent’s head. He jumps and looks around for a moment panicked, but Steve comes out wiping blood from his hands. 
  * When he asks Steve what had just happened Steve answers. 
  * _Mercy._
  * Sam is sick at that. 
  * It’s a year before he even sees the Winter Soldier. That doesn’t mean he’s not there. Clean gunshots follow Steve’s path through his carnage. 
  * Sam gets letters. First in Russian and then in English, all signed from Sergeant Barnes. 
  * Do not let Steve go out tonight. 
  * Keep him away from Mexico for the next month. 
  * Tell him that I will shoot him next if he does that again. 
  * It doesn’t take long before Sam realizes that the Winter Soldier has saved more lives than he could ever be able to kill. 



* * *

  * Hydra is gone before Bucky shows his face. Steve hadn’t been able to find a trail in a month. Steve was getting bored. Steve and bored were a dangerous mix. 
  * Imagine Bucky Barnes kissing a mouth full of blood as he pulls Steve from another stupid fight. 
  * Give me Steve Rogers who had become Earth’s Mightiest Hero and passed the Shield onto Sam. 
  * Not because it’s the right thing to do but because that is what will cause the most panic, the most chaos. 
  * Imagine Steve being selfish and choosing Bucky.



* * *

  * There are still newspaper clippings in Natasha's room as she tracks Steve’s locations, his moments of violence, but she doesn’t look for them. That would only encourage him to come out. 
  * Imagine a world thankful and at peace because Steve Rogers disappeared into the night. 
  * Sam doesn’t say it out loud but he thinks to himself sometimes that it was a good thing the Winter Soldier had existed or no one would have been able to save the world from Captain America. 
  * Bucky Barnes was never Steve Roger’s protector; he was everyone else's. 
  * Sam still gets letters sometimes. 
  * Dear Sam. Tell us if the world needs someone to disappear. Steve is getting antsy. From Sergeant Barnes. 
  * Imagine Bucky Barnes Protector of the world, Lover of Steve Rogers, and Captain American’s handler. 
  * Without him, the world would have burned. 



Give me Dark! Steve Rogers.

**Author's Note:**

> Edited 11/21/2020 for grammar and clarity.  
> Any and all feed back or criticism is appreciated!


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